The Exiles and Other Stories

The Texas Pan American Series

THE EXILES

and Other Stories

By
Horacio Quiroga

Selected, translated,
and with an introduction
by
J. David Danielson

With the assistance of
Elsa K. Gambarini

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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN

The Texas Pan American Series is published with the assistance of a revolving publication fund established by the Pan American Sulphur Company.

“The Orange-Distillers” was first published, in slightly different form, in the South Dakota Review (1983) and is here reprinted with permission.

Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 1987

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quiroga, Horacio, 1878–1937.
    The exiles and other stories.

    (The Texas Pan American series)
    1. Quiroga, Horacio, 1878–1937—Translations, English.   I. Danielson, J. David (John David), 1926- .   II. Gambarini, Elsa K.   III. Title.   IV. Series.
PQ8519.Q5A23   1987   863   86-30722
ISBN 978-0-292-72050-3
ISBN 978-0-292-72051-0 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-292-75352-5 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-75353-2 (individual e-book)

Contents

Introduction

Translator’s Note

Beasts in Collusion

The Contract Laborers

The Log-Fishermen

The Yaciyateré

The Charcoal-Makers

The Wilderness

A Workingman

The Exiles

Van-Houten

Tacuara-Mansión

The Darkroom

The Orange-Distillers

The Forerunners

Map of Misiones

List of Place Names

A Quiroga Chronology

Introduction

At the turn of the century the subtropical territory of Misiones, in northeastern Argentina, was a frontier region, not only by virtue of its location between Brazil to the east and north and Paraguay to the west, but also, and especially, because it was a land of pioneers, somewhat like Alaska and the Yukon at the same moment in the history of North America. It was populated by aboriginal natives, mestizos, blacks, and whites; by Argentines, Brazilians, Paraguayans, and foreigners from abroad; by speakers of Guaranã, of Spanish and Portuguese, and of a number of later immigrant languages from Europe. The zone was—and remains—important for its forest products, and above all its yerbales or plantations of yerba mate, the green tea especially favored in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and southern Brazil. Such plantations were first established by the Jesuits in the early seventeenth century, as a major economic venture of their reducciones (collective settlements) of Guaranã natives, which flourished till the company was expelled from the Spanish dominions in 1767. It is of course the missions they founded which gave Misiones its name.

This is the setting of almost all of the most celebrated stories of Horacio Quiroga, including those selected for the present volume—excepting the lead story, “Beasts in Collusion,” which is set in the Brazilian Mato Grosso to the north. They are tales of risk and danger, suffering, disease, horror, and death; but also of courage and dignity, hard work, and human endurance in the face of hostile nature and the frequent brutality of men. In most of the stories translated here (all but two appearing in English for the first time) there are piquant touches of humor and bemused irony as well.

Our title, The Exiles and Other Stories, echoes that of one of Quiroga’s own volumes, Los desterrados (1926), often said to be his best book. Included here are five stories from that collection, seven written earlier (1908–1923), and one subsequently (1929). This latest tale, “The Forerunners,” picks up a theme introduced in the title story, “The Exiles,” and is one of five that present characters who appear in more than one story. All thirteen are similar in inspiration, and may be said to constitute a kind of loosely structured, episodic novel—along with some of those published in The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), especially “Drifting,” “A Slap in the Face,” “In the Middle of the Night,” “The Dead Man,” and “The Son.” These stories are held together by common themes, situations, and conflicts—and of course their common setting in Misiones—but most of all by their vision of man (of men and women) in that setting, including Quiroga himself, who appears in various guises, and according to A. H. Rodrãguez “made of himself the best character in his work” (El mundo ideal de Horacio Quiroga, 3a ed. [Posadas: Montoya, 1985], p. 47).

Quiroga has been compared to our own Jack London, his contemporary and fellow-practitioner of a characteristically New World type of fiction. But he was far less ideological and political than London, more bourgeois in origin, better educated, and more literary as a youth, having published before he was twenty and edited the Revista de Salto before his trip to Paris at twenty-one (1900). His formative years coincided with the apogee of the estheticist modernista movement in Spanish American literature (Rubén Darío arrived in Buenos Aires in 1893, and stayed till 1898), and his first two books (1901, 1904) betray its influence, as well as that of Charles Baudelaire’s exemplar, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. At this time his interest in the dark side of life was still largely literary, though he had already suffered the death of his father, his stepfather, and a close friend (see “A Quiroga Chronology” at the end of this volume).

When he discovered Misiones, Quiroga apparently found a world free of the constraints of urban life, where he could forge an existence in accordance with his own designs. He was of course not a primitive, but a sophisticated modern who brought culture and technology to the wilderness. He had books, all sorts of tools, and even a Model T, the latter a decided rarity in the Misiones of that day. From 1903 on he would spend about half his time in the north (including the Chaco, Corrientes, and Paraguay as well as Misiones) and half in Buenos Aires, where he would continually long for the home he had built with his own hands, overlooking the Paraná, near San Ignacio (see map). He had become a successful writer in the city, and did not need to struggle in Misiones, but that was where he wanted to be, where he felt he belonged. No doubt it was his destiny to confront life in its most basic forms, and to exploit the openness of the frontier, both directly, in his manual labor, and literarily, in his fiction. Though the urban Quiroga will always be remembered for such gripping tales as “The Decapitated Chicken,” it is in Misiones that he finds his truest and most authentic voice. And his intense feeling for the land and its people is unmistakable. Even a quasi-mystical communion with nature is detectable at times.

Quiroga’s characters are a varied lot.